Sinn Féin has called on the Government to scrap the HSE's recruitment freeze as part of the party's plans to overhaul community healthcare.
The party's health spokesman, David Cullinane, outlined proposals to improve local GP and Health services.
Mr Cullinane said he has been visiting every hospital in the country, has had extensive briefings from GPs unions, the Irish Pharmacy Union and had spoken to Irish GPs and medics in Australia, about how to tempt them back home.
The Waterford TD said: "People are waiting longer than ever to access a GP, we have increasing difficulties with urgent out-of-hours GP care, it's patchy in many areas... people can't access it."
Mr Cullinane said that in any hospital visits, whether he is talking to nurses, consultants or hospital managers, they tell him that to fix trolley numbers, one cannot just focus on the hospitals themselves.
He said hospitals need more beds and needs more capacity.
"But in many hospitals, we have people going to emergency departments for the wrong care in the wrong place at the wrong time," he added.
"So, if we don't have those alternative care pathways, in primary and community care, we're never going to solve the problem. It's better for the patient. It's more cost efficient."
A big part of Mr Cullinane's plan is lifting the current HSE recruitment embargo and doubling the recruitment target to a minimum of 6,000 new jobs.
The Government said that the recruitment freeze does not apply to GPs, consultants and graduate nurses and midwives.
But the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has referred the matter to the Workplace Relations Commission.
It said that the recruitment moratorium of frontline patient-facing staff cannot continue.
Phil Ní Sheaghdha, General Secretary of the INMO, said that the freeze poses a very serious health and safety risk to nurses and midwives.
Meanwhile, Mr Cullinane said that he wants to increase training places for GPs by 30%, from 350 to 450.
He said that Sinn Féin would initially increase training places across medical, nursing and social care professions by 20%.
He said his party colleague Matt Carthy had travelled to Australia last week as part of a delegation with Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald and met with young Irish healthcare workers.
He said one of the purposes of that trip was "to engage with people who have left, to say we want you to come home".
Mr Cullinane said he would try to bring them home "by providing the supports and the services and resources. Not by telling them you can't go somewhere".
